A Five Wood and a Putter
Complexity is disastrous.
You know this. I know this. But sometimes we need to be reminded.
Last weekend, I played 36 holes of golf in Tampa with my college basketball teammates. We golf during the second weekend of the NCAA tournament every year.
I was worried I wouldn’t be able to play this year — I’m still in a boot after Achilles surgery — but one of my friends (a physical therapist) took it upon himself to figure out a game plan.
He landed on a two club approach: I’d only use a 5 wood and a putter. I’d swing the 5 wood with my right (injured) leg balanced behind me, so all the weight was on my left leg. If I was 250 yards away from the hole or 60 yards away, I’d use the 5 wood.
This is a preposterous way to play golf. Usually, you’ve got 14 clubs to choose from. The club that you hit 100 yards is different from the club you hit 115 yards which is different from the club you hit 130. But not me. Just a five wood and putter.
You know where this is going.
I played some of the best golf of my life. On one leg, using two clubs. I beat a bunch of my friends (who will never hear the end of this).
And it was all so…relaxing.
I sat there, 5 wood in hand, as they agonized over what club to hit. Should they try to hit their driver with a cut to carry the bunker? Should they try the lob wedge they’ve used twice this year?
By the second day, I was getting surgical with the five wood. I was figuring out how to hit the ball higher or lower or curve it one way or the other.
There are endless ways this translates into startups and life, and the main theme is that simplicity — removing as much as possible — will always help you move faster. But there are three big ones I want to highlight.
Switching costs - I watched in real-time as my friends tried to make 14 clubs all work well. That’s extraordinarily hard. There are a million examples of this for startups. You try one acquisition approach for a week then switch, you speak with one customer for a few weeks then switch, you move on before you get any sort of mastery. This dovetails with…
Reps - There’s no substitute for repetition. Shots on a basket. Swings with a 5 wood. I took more swings with a 5 wood last week than I have in the past three years. It turns out, when you do something a lot, you get really good at it. And, you start figuring out the nuances of that thing, which is where the value is. Which gets us to…
Hammer and Nail - In the real world, this is an insult. To someone with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. In the startup world, it’s not a bad thing. At least not early on. If you’re really good at one thing, figure out how to use it to solve all of your hardest problems. If you’re great at making Loom videos, use that for fundraising, for customer acquisition, for customer interviews, for…everything. Then, once you dig in and start doing everything with Loom, you’ll start getting into the nuances — understanding how to track how long people view videos, figuring out how to strategically place popups in videos to get conversion, etc. Getting really good at one thing and using it for everything can really work.
5 wood and a putter.
Reps and simplicity.